


something borrowed, something blue

by afearsomecritter (jsaer)



Category: Critical Role (Web Series), UnDeadwood (Web Series)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-02
Updated: 2020-04-02
Packaged: 2021-03-01 01:40:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,202
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23447182
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jsaer/pseuds/afearsomecritter
Summary: They are young and drunk and stupid and wearing a stolen dress and jacket and a pair of rings.
Relationships: Reverend Matthew Mason/Clayton Sharpe
Comments: 11
Kudos: 71





	something borrowed, something blue

**Author's Note:**

  * For [tragicallynerdy](https://archiveofourown.org/users/tragicallynerdy/gifts).
  * Inspired by [some old tin rings and a stolen wedding gown](https://archiveofourown.org/works/23402092) by [tragicallynerdy](https://archiveofourown.org/users/tragicallynerdy/pseuds/tragicallynerdy). 



> Dedicated to the wonderful tragicallynerdy for letting me play with this

\--

"What in the hell are you," Sharpe snarls, pistol wedged into the hinge of Matthew's jaw.

"What?" 

The hotel room door is shut but not locked and maybe Miriam will hear if he yells-

"Michah Monohan died from hangin' near fifteen years ago, why the _fuck_ do you have his face!"

And maybe it was the pitch of Sharpe's voice or the way the lantern light hit his eyes but recognition hit Matthew like a train.

"Amos?" he rasps.

\--

They are young and drunk and stupid and wearing a stolen dress and jacket and a pair of rings (handmade battered tin and maybe two wasn't traditional but they couldn't actually remember who'd asked first and it was only fair)

The priest is old and half blind and has married more than one giggling couple by candlelight and is happy enough to wed another (and if he doesn't look too closely at the scribbled names well that's his own business isn't it)

There is breathless, giddy nervous laughter and tangled fingers and blossoming hope, after. 

This lasts two months.

\--

There have been times when Clayton has gouged his finger on a ripped piece of metal, and it takes a moment for the blood to well up and the pain to hit.

He is watching a leather coat settle on broad shoulders and the first slice of familiarity of an almost familiar face begins to bleed. He knows he stares and all he can think of is a different leather jacket he hasn't seen in-

"Anyway," Clayton says, jerking his gaze away.

\--

Amos leaves for a job. It's a simple, easy thing, just playing guard for a stagecoach with some paranoid city folk, should just be a few days.

Michah had shoved his cold nose into Amos’s neck that morning, whining about being awake so early and all but draped his still growing self across Amos’s shoulders as he tried to make coffee while being assailed by a semi-sentient blanket. This description had netted him a grumbling reply about being fully sentient, thank you, he just needs coffee. Also, he’d declared, ice cold hands sneaking under Amos’s shirt to get him to yelp, he doesn’t need to be awake to stock the general store, so there.

Amos just laughed and shoved his mug at him, ring clinking against the metal handle.

Michah had tugged him in for another kiss when Amos was trying to walk out the door, and he was nearly late and slightly flushed when he arrived at the station.

When he gets back four days later he hears all about the deserter that’d been found and hung two days earlier. 

\--

He has to run less than eight hours later, when the new stack of Wanted posters come in. The horse had to make sure they weren’t going to hit any trees, Amo-he couldn’t see too well right then.

(all he could see was a grave marker)

\--

Clayton flinches at the name in a dead man’s voice and hates himself for it. The gun digs deeper but the Reverend-the whatever doesn’t seem to notice, wide dark eyes locked on his face.

“I couldn’t find you, I thought you were de-” the Reverend breathes and cuts himself off at whatever expression shows itself on Clayton’s face. 

“You _were_ dead,” Amo-Clayton snarls, “I saw your goddamn grave, I saw the the fucking _rope_ -”

“It didn’t take,” the Reverend says, and starts to lift his hands only to drop them when Clayton presses his arm harder across the other man’s chest, pinning him fully against the wall.

“Please,” the man with Michah's face says, if he’d lived past twenty.

A pause, then Clayton releases him and backs up, gun still drawn. The Reverend just reaches for his neck and undoes several buttons and tugs the white collar off and then the dark shirt out of the way and-

The world spins, just a bit.

There’s an old, brutal rope scar wrapped around the Reverend’s throat. 

“It didn’t take,” Michah repeats. 

\--

Michah woke up coughing three feet underground. He will be grateful that they buried him shallow, eventually, but not right now.

\--

"How?" 

\--

"What's your name, stranger?" Amos asks, crooked smile and charming and no fear yet ground into his bones for all his fleeing. 

"Monohan," says the other man, eyes bright and sharp and few their shadows, deep though they are, "but my friends call me Michah."

\--

"I don't know, I just woke up in the grave and dug my way out," a quiet huff of laughter, " they were too cheap to bury me more'n a couple feet deep."

" _Fuck_." Clayton presses his palms to his eyes. "Then you must've got out before I came back, you couldn't have been down there more'n-" he sees Matthew's expression and stops.

"How long."

\--

He doesn't go stumbling back into town covered in grave dirt like a goddamn fool, he steals a horse and rides for the next town over and hopes Amos don't rip his head off when he gets back.

Then he sees the date in the newspaper in town.

\--

“I don’t know why I’m not like those-those things out there. But I’m not I promise I’m not-”

“You’re a lot better looking, for one,” Amo-Clayton replies, years old reflex kicking in. 

Mi-Matthew stares at him for a beat before he laughs and laughs and gasps "I missed you."

\--

His name is not Michah when he arrives in the town where he was buried. He doesn’t find an Amos Kinsley either, or anyone with his face. 

\--

"Matthew Mason, you didn't even fucking change your initials-"

"Hey now, I've had other names, and besides who has an alias like 'Coffin'?"

"Well I fucking left my heart in one-" and Clayton cuts himself off even as Matthew's eyes go wide and then he's crushed to a broad chest.

He can hear Matthew's heart thumping steadily under his ear, and Micha-Matthew still smells the same, same goddamn cheap soap and leather and Clayton cannot help the guttural noise he makes even as he feels Matthew shake as he buried his cold nose into Clayton's neck.

They move to the bed eventually, still clutching each other and relishing in impossible heartbeats, tucked and curled together under blankets.

\--

"I'm not who you married," comes a whispered truth in the dark.

"I'm not either," replies another truth, "I'm still not a good man, but I try to be."

Quieter, "I want to be, for you."

"If I was a good man I'm not anymore. I don't know if I can be, even for you."

".....could you just be mine?"

A pause, then a huff of laughter and shift of blankets as one figure rolls over, face to face in the dark.

"Shit Reverend, you sure you want a sinner like me?"

A broad hand cups his cheek, thumb brushing the thin skin next to night blind eyes. 

"Only if you want one like me."

The skin under his thumb crinkles, pressed into existence by an unseen smile.

"Ain't you always been a sweet talker," says fragile hope in the dark, "Alright, alright."

\--

(miriam is more than a little bewildered when they both answer her knock the next morning, but that's for then)

\--


End file.
